Where Art & Engineering Collide

STS-127 Shuttle Launch Photos

Posted on 15. Jul, 2009 by Terry Reinert in Photography

After many scrubbed launches, everything came together this afternoon for a beautiful launch of shuttle Endeavor. At 6:03pm the shuttle left the pad and sped off towards space and its eventual rendevous with the International Space Station. My brother was able to get me and a few friends to the turn basin to watch the launch and it was a great show!

Canon 5D, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L, 220mm, 1/160 sec @ f/8.0

As you can see from the image captions, I was shooting with my Canon 5D and the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens. Photographing a shuttle launch is an interesting endeavor (no pun intended). You can meter for the sky and landscape all day long but as soon as the SRB’s light up all your metering goes to hell. Even during a daylight launch the difference is quite astounding. So my thought going into the moment was to sit in Manual mode, keep the aperature fixed at f/8.0, and change the shutter speed manually based on what I was seeing.

Canon 5D, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L, 400mm, 1/160 sec @ f/8.0

That tactic worked really well except that I didn’t really pay attention to the screen while I was shooting… I was too busy watching the launch and shooting frames. All I can say is that I was shooting way too slow… 1/160 sec was much too slow and all those images came out a bit over exposed. Once I realized it I bumped it up to 1/320 sec and that was a bit better… but still a little slow. Live and learn, right? Again, as soon as those SRB’s light up all your metering goes to hell… so if you ever get a chance to shoot a launch up close, pick a shutter speed that you think will work and then cut it in half. Shoot faster than you think you will need to!

Canon 5D, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L, 100mm, 1/160 sec @ f/8.0

Every now and then I made sure to zoom out and pan down to capture some frames of the smoke covered pad. You’d think that there would be a lot more exhaust from the huge rockets that accellerate such a huge thing fast enough to escape the atmosphere. Then again, if I were a lot closer than the 2.7 miles or so that we were at I am sure the smoke would seem a heck of a lot more present!

Canon 5D, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L, 100mm, 1/320 sec @ f/8.0

The above shot is really cool because you can see the shadow of the smoke trail off to the right of trail. At first I didn’t realize what that was… lukily someone was there to lend me a clue and once they said what it was I felt pretty dumb. But in my defense I had never seen that in previous launches and was still awed at the launch itself.

Canon 5D, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L, 400mm, 1/320 sec @ f/8.0

The people in the above image are part of the Close Out Crew that straps the astronauts in and closes the hatch. They are the last people who see the astronauts until they reach the International Space Station. After the launch they began shaking hands and congratulating each other on a job well done.

Canon 5D, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L, 220mm, 1/200 sec @ f/8.0

The Nikon D5000 above is one of Jeff King’s cameras. He and Vanelli were both at the launch with me. He had the D5000 out as well as his Nikon D3. At least I am pretty sure it was a D3. I don’t really know a whole lot about the Nikon camera line but both King and V are trying to remedy that. I am still happy with my Canon 5D.

Related posts:

1. STS-119 Discovery Shuttle Launch
2. STS-132 : Space Shuttle Atlantis
3. My STS-132 Image on Flickr Blog
4. Space Shuttle Sighting
5. STS-127 Space Mission

Tags: Canon 100-400mm f/4 L, Canon 5D, NASA, Space Shuttle